'In my interactions with clients over last quarter, conversation starts and stops with ChatGPT’: TCS COO NG Subramaniam

NG Subramaniam

The macroeconomic climate has led to Tata Consultancy Services taking a pessimistic tone, but clients of the company are captivated with generative AI, says the company’s Chief Operating Officer NG Subramaniam. According to him, clients are questioning how they are integrating software like ChatGPT into their offerings, or if they have plans to do so.

"In my interactions with all these clients over the last quarter, the conversation starts and stops with ChatGPT. Everybody talks about ChatGPT and what it's going to do. It’s very clear that innovation is surpassing productivity. That kind of theme is what is spanning out in all these deal wins that we have, it's a huge amount of focus on cloud data. At the same time, you know, machine learning is a very, very important area of focus for people,” he said while addressing journalists after the company announced its results for Q4FY23.

For now, the focus of TCS will be on how they apply aspects like machine learning and deep learning to the data and “raise the bar” for their delivery capabilities.

The company is also running pilots, and plans to have a centre of excellence around the technology.

“ChatGPT kind of a technology is like any other tool, any other technology. As it matures, I think we will be ready for it. We will have a centre of excellence around it, we will have core competencies built around it and then see what are the drawbacks on it. What are the pros for it, and then use it the right way to deliver responsibly and meaningfully to our clients,” he said.

He added that while it may be too early to say how it will pan out in the future, he believed that with generative AI, “every small area that was not touched upon by technology, I think it has the potential to be touched”.

You're going to see technology everywhere and it will only accelerate the adoption of some of the borderline technology or frontier areas of technology, he added.

Speaking to analysts, he said that generative AI has the potential to live up to the expectation.

“Many quarters ago, I mentioned that AI/ML has the potential to fundamentally change the way that we deliver software to our clients and a significant part of what we are doing today can get automated, can get generated…I think we are quite excited about the opportunity of delivering proven code. Whether you can call it a low code, no code, zero-code, or a generative AI kind of software, the result is a software that generates software. I think we’ve built such an expertise around that capability, around the toolset and stay relevant to our clients' expectations,” he said.

However, there has been one looming question ever since ChatGPT burst onto the scene and generative AI became a part of everyday lexicon: will it replace people and take away jobs?

Chief Human Resources Officer Milind Lakkad said this is something they’ve seen for many years — that whenever a new technology comes in, jobs don’t reduce, they change. “We’ll have to add on skills to what they learn and based on that new value will be created for the customer,” he said.